The Hotel Ukraina
 
 
 
 

Our hotel in Moscow, the Ukraina, is one of seven, large landmark buildings from the Stalin era.  Inside, the lobbies are spacious and the floors the original parquet.  Definitely the nicest of the places we stayed on our trip.  At about $100 a night including the excellent buffet breakfast (pictured above) it's a pretty good value too.  Especially considering that some truly awful places charge this much for foreigners, although the price for locals is much lower.



The view from our sixth story room.  The river is the Moscow River and the large white building is the "Russian White House," famous as the site where Boris Yelstin and crowds of people faced down the tanks during the abortive coup against Gorbachev in 1991.  At that time the building housed the Duma (parliament). In 1993, Russians saw television coverage of a tank assault by Yelstin on the same building.  Now it houses the government of the Russian Federation.